assets needed to move the packaged forces to wherever they are needed.
This is where ACC comes in — as the one-stop supplier for USAF combat aircraft. If you need a wing of F- 15s with AWACS support to keep a no-fly zone patrolled, ACC supplies the units that will make it happen. In addition, they can supply airbase construction teams (Red Horse battalions), Tactical Air Control Centers (TACCs), medical teams, and even field kitchens, for use at undeveloped airfield sites. They are also, as was demonstrated recently in Haiti, capable of deploying forces from their home bases in America directly into a crisis area.
ACC: THE FORCE
So just what is ACC made up of? The slides of the 'ACC Today' command briefing (September 1994) are full of numbers, some of them almost numbing in magnitude. Over 250,000 personnel, including 117,700 in the Air National Guard (ANG) and Air Force Reserves (AFRES). Twenty-five dedicated ACC bases, with ACC units 'bedded down' at eleven other USAF installations. ACC boasts a force of some 3,230 aircraft (1,640 active, 1,590 ANG/AFRES) in some 160 different 'battle management units,' as they are called. These are distributed in four numbered air forces across the continental United States:
• 1st Air Force—Provides fighters, radars, and other units as the primary air component of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
• 8th Air Force—Provides the bomber force for ACC, as well as being the primary air component for STRATCOM and USACOM.
• 9th Air Force—Equipped mainly with fighter and transport aircraft, it is the primary air component for CENTCOM.
• 12th Air Force—This is the primary air component for SOUTHCOM, as well as the airborne battle management component for STRATCOM.
In short, if it is a combat USAF aircraft, it belongs to ACC.
Headquartered at Langley AFB, Virginia, near Hampton Roads, ACC is commanded from the old TAC headquarters building. From here, General Joe Ralston (the current ACC commander) oversees one of the largest aerial combat units in the world today. But it's a shrinking unit, down from its 1980s high point of almost forty combat wings. In the fall of 1994, ACC was based around a force of some 22 1/2 combat wings. The calculus of counting military strength is an arcane science at best, but for our purposes, we will assume that a fighter wing equivalent (FWE) is composed of roughly seventy-two aircraft in three squadrons of twenty-four planes each. The bad news is that preplanned cuts will drop this number to 20 1/2 wings by 1996. Despite this, Generals Loh and Ralston have worked hard to make this force stretch to meet the requirements of the current Administration's two near-simultaneous MRCs strategy.
One way is to retrofit older airframes with the new series of precision munitions. Another is to make the limited number of new airframes (B-2As and F-22As) as capable as possible, so they might do individually more than the aircraft they will replace. In General Loh's view, any air force that buys new aircraft that are neither stealthy nor equipped with new generation precision and fire-and-forget weapons is committing a criminal act. This is not an extreme point of view; it is borne out by the results of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The effectiveness of aircraft like the F-117A and the F-15E shows what can be done with modern systems and advanced aircraft engineering.
When you think of ACC today, the cutting edge of its capability is the fighter force. The word fighter is broadly defined. The USAF classifies any tactical combat aircraft as a fighter, regardless of whether it has an air- to-air capability or not. As shown in Table 1 below, the ACC fighter force is currently based around six different types of aircraft (F-15, F-16, F-15E, F-111, F-117, and A-10), which provide it with the bulk of its strike and interdiction capability. A further look shows that something like 25 % of the ACC force is based overseas with United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) and the Pacific Air Force (PACAF). These will almost certainly be pulled back to U.S. territory. In the Pacific, this has already begun, with units previously assigned to the Philippines being transferred to bases in Alaska, Okinawa, and Hawaii. Similar cuts and transfers are being made in Europe, with the bulk of the remaining USAFE units now based in the United Kingdom and Italy, with a continuing presence in Turkey.
Another point to notice is the small but significant force of air defense fighters which 'chop' to the control of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) for purposes of continental air defense and airspace control. It is a sign of the times that these aircraft are no longer flown by active duty USAF personnel, but by units of the ANG. In fact, if you look closely, over 40 % of the ACC fighter force is made up of AFRES/ANG units flown by dedicated weekend warriors who might fly you commercially from Washington to Boston on a normal weekday. This is the total force concept put forward after the Vietnam War, where reserve and national guard units are equipped with the same up-to-date equipment as the active components, and trained with them to be able to work together in time of crisis. For example, during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, AFRES and ANG provided the bulk of the deterrent reserve for Korea, as well as virtually all of the air defense for the United States, while the bulk of the active force was fighting the war with Iraq. The process, called backfilling, is vital to the multiple MRC strategy, if it is to work.
As for the future, the good news is that there is a new airframe on the way to replace the F-15 Eagle, the backbone of the fighter and interceptor force for over two decades. When the F-22 arrives for service in the early part of the next decade, it will probably become the basic 'heavy' fighter airframe for the USAF. The bad news is that the program will only see production of 442 fighter versions, about enough for four and a half wings of fighters in the current ACC structural scheme. In addition, there will be further cuts in the aircraft shown in Table 1 in some especially critical areas. The most likely place for cuts will be in the force of F-111Fs operated by the 27th Wing at Cannon AFB, New Mexico. While the Aardvarks of the 27th are some of the oldest and most expensive aircraft in the ACC force to operate and maintain (O&M), they also have the longest range and some of the best weapons systems in the whole of the USAF. Most important, to lose the entire force of F-111s, with their invaluable Pave Tack delivery systems, is to give up almost 25 % of the Air Force's PGM delivery capability. According to current ACC plans, the B-1B force will take over this role when the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) programs come online in the late 1990s. The problem is that none of the munitions these critical programs are designed to deliver is yet in service, meaning that if we prematurely retire aircraft capable of precision strikes, we will have a window of vulnerability that might prove critical in a time of crisis.
And then there is the shortage of F-15E Strike Eagle airframes. To sustain the current force of roughly two hundred F-15Es, ACC will need about forty additional airframes to make up for aircraft lost in accidents and projected combat attrition. Despite a hard fixed price offer by McDonnell Douglas ($50 million per copy), there is no money for such a sensible purchase. Lockheed has submitted a similar bid for its F-16 Block 50/52 Fighting Falcon, at $20 million per aircraft, and Northrop has submitted a bid of $595 million per aircraft for the B-2A Spirit. Money is just that tight right now.
'What the hell are we going to do with bombers?' When ACC was created in 1992, some of the former TAC- types were asking that question. And the answer they wanted to hear was: 'We don't need them. Throw them the
